We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province of South Australia—­a seventeen-hour excursion.  On the train we found several Sydney friends; among them a Judge who was going out on circuit, and was going to hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver mine is.  It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region.  Broken Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and Sydney is on the eastern border.  A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn westward from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo.  The way the Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said; southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New South Wales once more—­to Broken Hill.  It was like going from Boston southwest to Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant back northeast and over the border—­to Buffalo, New York.

But the explanation was simple.  Years ago the fabulously rich silver discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpectant world.  Its stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most fanciful figures.  It was one of those cases where the cook puts a month’s wages into shares, and comes next mouth and buys your house at your own price, and moves into it herself; where the coachman takes a few shares, and next month sets up a bank; and where the common sailor invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out the steamship company and goes into business on his own hook.  In a word, it was one of those excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center with a rush, and whose needs must be supplied, and at once.  Adelaide was close by, Sydney was far away.  Adelaide threw a short railway across the border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one; it was not worth while for Sydney to arrange at all.  The whole vast trade-profit of Broken Hill fell into Adelaide’s hands, irrevocably.  New South Wales furnishes for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles—­mainly through alien countries—­to administer it, but Adelaide takes the dividends and makes no moan.

We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level until night.  In the morning we had a stretch of “scrub” country—­the kind of thing which is so useful to the Australian novelist.  In the scrub the hostile aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to time to surprise and slaughter the settler; then slipping back again, and leaving no track that the white man can follow.  In the scrub the novelist’s heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious, and the searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is near, and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic